


Chalcedony

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Fever, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-29
Updated: 2008-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stranded on an alien planet during a rescue mission, a powerless Superman tries to help an ailing Batman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chalcedony

During their fall to the ground, Batman had just enough time to wonder how best to translate "I told you so" into Kryptonian.

Then he and the convulsing Man of Steel hit the swampy ground of the marsh with a very large splash, filthy water flying everywhere.

Batman dragged Superman toward more solid ground, thanking all the deities he didn't believe in that they had been over a bog rather than a prairie.  The Kryptonian was making strangled choking noises and Batman had to make sure he didn't inhale too much muddy water;  by the time they got to something like a shore Superman had lapsed into silent unconsciousness.  Batman tried to get some of the mud off Superman's face, with little effect.  He probably looked a lot worse, but it was...annoying to have to see Kal's face marked with filth.

Slowly, the turquoise eyes opened, dazed with pain.  "What hit us?"  said Clark.

Bruce abandoned the fifteen possible translations ranging from exquisitely, insultingly polite to scatalogically rude and snarled in English, "I _told_ you this was a bad idea.  I _told_ you Jordan could take care of himself or that the Corps would help him.  I _told_ you a planet of space pirates was very likely to have disrupters that could take even you out."

Clark scowled.  "And _I_ told you that I wasn't going to sit by when a member of the JLA suddenly cuts transmission in the middle of a mission.  Why'd you even come along if this was such a bad idea?"  Superman flicked mud from his sodden curl and grimaced.  


"Apparently because you need someone to babysit you when you get shot down in enemy territory," grumbled Batman, helping the Kryptonian sit up.  "Can you fly?"

Superman closed his eyes and winced.  "Not a chance.  Those disruptors must have taken it out of me.  I'm weak as a kitten."  


"Great."  Batman refrained from saying "I told you so" again with an effort, but the mulish look in Clark's eyes told him he heard the unstated words.   "We'd better get moving."    


"Where are we going?"     


Batman tapped his communicator again pointlessly, knowing it wouldn't get a signal.  "No idea.  But they'll be looking for us."       


The pair made their way slowly through the clinging, fetid swamp as the sun slowly set and the sky began to amass with thunderous clouds.  More than once they had to stop and backtrack as the bog became too treacherous to continue, and one time they stumbled into a patch of ferns and a cloud of scarlet spores rose up around them, reducing Batman to helpless coughing for far too long.  Superman tried to support him, to help him somehow, but the vigilante shook him off irritably and struggled with the racking spasms alone.

A few hours in, they heard the sound of marching feet and took cover as a patrol of space pirates, clad in spiky black armor like chitin, goose-stepped past.  Crouched next to Batman in a tangle of what looked like cypress roots, muddy water soaking into his boots, Superman could feel the other man shuddering with the effort not to cough.  As the sound of tramping boots faded into the distance, Batman exhaled carefully--and broke into another fit of coughing.

"I'm worried about you," Superman said as they picked their way out from the roots.  "Those spores--"

"--You're out of power, lost in a swamp, being hunted by space pirates, and you're worried about _me?"_   Batman made a small huffing sound.  A drop of rain _plinked_ into the water they were wading through, followed by another, and another.  Thunder in the distance.  "Right now I think we'd better worry about finding some kind of shelter."

They slogged through the muddy, treacherous ground.  Batman's head was down, focused on his footing, so Clark was the first to see the tiny hut crouched against a huge banyan-like tree.  He tapped Bruce's arm silently, drawing his attention to it through the increasingly dense curtain of rain, and they approached it slowly.

It was empty, cobwebs and dust marking it as unused for a long time--a single room with a cot, a rickety chair, and a stove, rough wood walls, nothing else.  The roof appeared to be metal;  the rain outside made a droning hum that filled the room.  "Sit down," Superman said, pointing toward the bed.  "Rest.  I'll try to start a fire."  Miraculously, there was kindling and dry firewood;  Clark set to work trying to start a blaze.  Behind him, Batman was silent, and Clark felt his shoulderblades tense at the implied condemnation:  _Stupid Boy Scout, getting us stuck in a swamp, lost and powerless._ "I figure we'll wait here until morning or until the rain lets up," he said, trying to sound like he was confident and had a plan.   


No response.  Clark watched the tiny sparks slowly start to set the kindling ablaze and blew on them gently.  "At least the roof doesn't leak, right?" he said cheerfully, knowing the cheery tone would annoy Batman further but unsure what other tone to take.  "Too bad there doesn't seem to be any food.  Not that I'm sure I'd want to eat whatever space pirates think is food, mind you.  They seem a rather surly bunch--did you see their armor?  Not that there's anything wrong with all black," he added hastily, knowing he was chattering simply to fill the accusatory space between them, unable to stop, "But you carry it off with less spikes and malice, you know?  Your costume has attitude, but it's not a Nazi-type attitude.  Oh, for Heaven's sake," he finally snapped, swinging around, "You know it drives me crazy when you give me the silent treatment, so--"

He cut off when he saw Batman's face, flushed and sweating under the cowl, saw his friend swaying slightly on the cot.  Clark sprang up, all irritation forgotten.  "Bruce!  Why didn't you tell me you were getting so sick?"  Batman shook his head slightly and didn't answer.  A drop of sweat dripped off his chin and splashed onto a gauntleted hand gripping his knee tightly.

Clark fumbled with the cowl, releasing the safety measures to pull it off.  Batman made no protest, but didn't help him, either.  The hair beneath the cowl was soaked in sweat, the forehead damp and ruddy.  Clark could feel heat radiating off it, off Bruce's face.  "Batman.  Bruce."  Clark shook him slightly.  "Lie down."

Bruce's eyes slowly focused on his.  "I can't."  His voice was hoarse.  "I need to think.  How we're going to get out of this.  Have to keep us safe."

Clark felt the rebuke sting him, but the resentment vanished as Bruce doubled over coughing again, a deep, rattling cough now.  Clark put an arm around him, and Bruce didn't shake him off, which only deepened Clark's alarm.  "Let me...let me get some water," he said, noticing a pail in the corner.  He grabbed it and went out into the torrent, letting rain water pool in the bucket.  When he came back, Bruce was still swaying slightly, his eyes glassy.  He looked worse.

Clark dipped the edge of his cape in the water and dabbed at Bruce's forehead, cursing the water-repellent qualities of Kryptonian cloth.  "You'll be fine," Clark said cheerfully, more to himself than Bruce.  "You've got a bit of fever--"  His friend's forehead was scorchingly hot under his hands, "--but I'm sure it'll break soon, and you'll be just fine!"

"I can't think," Bruce said irritably.  "I can't--" he batted at Clark's anxious hands, "--I can't _think_ when you're _burning_ me like that."

Clark fell back a step.  "Burning...?"

Bruce's eyes narrowed.  "I don't know why I have to take my shoes off.  That doesn't seem fair.  I should be able to keep my shoes on."

Clark inched forward.  "Bruce, I think...you've got a pretty bad fever, so maybe you should lie down now."

Bruce obligingly stretched out on the bed, still glaring sightlessly ahead.  He took a long breath and winced.  "Let me keep my shoes on..." he muttered.

"Sure, sure, I've got no problem with the shoes," Clark said.  "I just...need you to rest."

"Can't shut off my mind.  And I can't think," Bruce said.  He chuckled weakly, his eyes almost lucid for a second.  "Not...a good combination."

"No," Clark agreed, pulling up the wobbly chair to sit next to him, "Not exactly." 

He reached out to touch Bruce's forehead again and Bruce winced away from him.  "Burns," he muttered.

"You're the one with the fever, Bruce," Clark pointed out mildly.  "You're the one burning up."

"Of course I am," Bruce said.  "Because you burn me."

Clark bit his lip, uncertain of how to respond.  At his silence, Bruce continued speaking, his voice calm and reasonable, "If you weren't so damn _bright,_ you know.  If you didn't burn like that, things would be so much easier.  But no.  You have to go and be made of chalcedony.  Chalcedony and jacinth.  Pure gold, like unto clear glass."  He sounded as conversational as if he were discussing the JLA roster, but his hands clenched and huge beads of sweat were on his brow.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Bruce," Clark whispered as he touched his wet cape to the other man's forehead again.

"Of course you don't!"  Bruce's voice was filled with sudden fury.  "You don't _listen_ to me, even when I'm perfectly clear!"  His eyes blazed feverishly.  "And the locusts eat big holes in me--can't you even _see_ the holes?"  He pointed at his chest angrily, his hand shaking.  "And the holes get all filled up with light and it _burns_ me.  Usually it's easy to fix holes," Bruce continued, his voice suddenly clinical again.  "It just takes some shadows to cover them up.  They don't _fill_ the holes like light does, but that's okay, you know."  His eyes glinted, fierce and hawk-like, at Clark.  " _Right?"  
_  
"Right.  I know.  I understand," said Clark hastily.

Bruce snorted.  "Oh, you _understand."_   His voice was beginning to have a note of panic in it.  "Locusts.  Wheels inside wheels.  You hold live coals to my lips and let them burn me."  He tossed his head on the stained and ratty pillow, his eyes squinting shut in pain.  The sound of the rain was terribly loud on the roof.  " _Can't you just let me be, Clark?_ Why--why do you have to drag all the little shadows into the light and make them burn?  Like foxes, little foxes, they never bothered you so why do you have to burn them?  Live coals--you're burning my mouth, stop--" 

Bruce reached up with a shaking hand and dragged his fingers in a clawing motion across his mouth, hard enough to leave marks.  "Unclean--" he said and raked his nails across his lips again. 

Horrified, Clark jumped forward to catch his hand and pull it down, trapping it in his own.  At the touch, Bruce screamed, an agonizing sound, and struggled to get free, his eyes entirely unseeing now, foam flecking his lips, raving about golden fires and shadows, the words no longer having any semblance of lucidity.

Clark clung to his hands to try to keep him from harming himself;  with his powers gone, if Bruce hadn't been so weak from the fever he could never have done it.  Cursing in English and Kryptonian, then apologizing over and over, he pinned Bruce to the cot and tried to keep him from injuring himself in his desperate thrashings. 

It went on for what seemed like forever.  Eventually Bruce went limp with a horrible rattling noise;  for a moment Clark wasn't sure he was still breathing, until his shaking hands found a thready pulse in the other man's neck.  Bruce's lips were spotted with bloody saliva;  Clark dabbed at them with his cape. 

There was another sound in the room, a strange, low noise under the rain.  After a moment, Clark realized it was the sound of himself weeping.

He scrubbed at his eyes with his cape, feeling stupid and helpless.  "Come on, Bruce.  You're going to let some stupid alien spores get you when nothing else can?  You're tougher than that."  He rested his head on Bruce's chest, listening to the faint heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.

After a little while, he drifted into a restless doze.

He awoke to another sound rising over the rain, a rhythmic tramping noise.  It took a moment for his exhausted brain to figure out what it had to be.

A space pirate patrol, marching past the hut.

Clark froze, thankful that there was no light in the hut to give them away.  The rain that was still drumming on the roof might keep the patrol from spotting the building they were in, if they remained very quiet...

Beneath him, Bruce stirred and groaned.

"Shh," begged Clark in a whisper.  "Bruce, you have to stay quiet."

"Chalcedony," Bruce muttered.  "Chalcedony.  The locusts can't eat it."  He took a long, almost startled breath.  "Wait," he whispered.  "That's it.  Clark, that's it!"  His voice rose slightly and his eyes were bright with some revelation Clark couldn't understand.  "I see it all now, I understand why you burn me."

Clark hardly heard what Bruce was saying;  agonizingly aware of the footsteps drawing closer. "Shh," he whispered again, putting a finger to Bruce's lips.

Bruce pushed his hand aside, not angrily but as if he were a minor interruption.  "No, no, I have to explain it to you now, it can't wait, I'll never be able to keep my shoes on long enough to tell you before you burn me up again later, so I have to tell you now!"  His voice was climbing in his excitement. "It's that I--"

His delirious explanation was cut short as Clark clamped a hand over his mouth to stop the flow of words.  Bruce twisted and writhed, trying to get free, sweat pouring down his face;  Clark leaned forward and whispered into his ear, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Bruce.  Not now, not now, I'm sorry.  Forgive me." 

Bruce's eyes looked at his imploringly for a moment over the filthy, muddy hand holding his mouth shut.  In a moment of preternatural clarity, Clark saw moisture spangling the dark lashes as Bruce tossed his head back and forth, struggling.  Then the eyes slid out of focus again, looking _through_ Clark and at something only Bruce could see.  Clark could feel the cries thrumming against the palm of his hand like moths, trapped, unheard, and he put his head down on Bruce's chest and struggled to keep his own sobs unheard over the rain.

The delirium seemed to last longer this time.  When the marching feet faded away, he took his hand from Bruce's mouth, but the other man's words seemed to have run dry and he merely laid with his eyes closed, his lips moving slightly from time to time.  Clark put a hand to his forehead and Bruce sighed and turned into the touch slightly.  His skin felt cooler.

The fever had broken.

As the rain died away and the first rays of the sun slipped through the cracks between the planks of the walls, Bruce's eyes opened.  Clark eyed him warily, but he seemed to be lucid, if drained and exhausted.  "Good morning," Clark whispered, and was surprised to hear how hoarse his own voice was.

Bruce made a small sound that wasn't quite a sigh and definitely wasn't a snort.  "I've had...better."

"Me too."

Bruce tried to sit up;  Clark put an arm around him to help move him into a sitting position.  "We need to...get moving."

"Can you walk?"

A weak chuckle was his only answer.

"Based on the timing with the patrols we heard, I'd say another is due to come by in a couple of hours.  I need you to help me figure out how to build a trap."

Bruce eyed him.  "Risky."

"For both of us, I know.  But I think it's our only chance."

A slight nod.  "Agreed."  Bruce braced himself against Clark's arm and started to rise, his face pale.

The door swung open to reveal the thick swamp outside.  "By the way," Clark said as he helped Bruce outside, "Last night, at the height of your delirium.  You said you'd realized something important, something you had to tell me."

Bruce's eyes were distant as he scanned the area for strategic points.  "Yes.  I remember."

"You do?"

"With crystal clarity.  Yes."  Bruce's jaw was oddly set.

"Well, what was it?"

For a second Bruce looked like he was going to say something, then he shook his head.  "Fever dreams, Clark.  Meaningless ravings."

 **: : :**

 ****Captain Sharrlit was annoyed when one of the members of his patrol lagged behind and vanished for a short period of time, but his annoyance was mitigated somewhat by having the straggler re-appear carrying one of the two men they were looking for.  "Found him in a hut over there, sir," said the straggler.  "His companion seems to have left him when he got sick rather than let him slow him down."

Sharrlit was so delighted to have found one of the prisoners that he mentally reminded himself to give the straggler only ten lashes rather than twenty later.  Each of the two fugitives was worth a king's ransom, and now he might get some of that.

"Where's your friend?" Sharrlit barked at the man, who rolled tired eyes. 

"Bastard...ditched me when I got sick.  Stupid...red spores..."  The man broke into a fit of coughing so severe it shook his whole body.  The soldier who'd captured him curled his arms more tightly around the prisoner, cradling him close to his chest to keep him from moving too much.

"Ha.  Serves you right, stumbling into the Red Mist like that."  Sharrlit eyed the man, who was shivering in the soldier's arms.  It wouldn't do him any good if the prisoner died on the way in.  "Here."  He extracted a vial from his belt.  "This should be an antidote to the worst of the effects.  You'll be able to walk in an hour or so, enough to not slow us down, at least."

The man sniffed it carefully, then drank it.  "Thank you," he said grudgingly.

Sharrlit laughed.  "Save the thanks, scum."

They set off marching back to the headquarters.  By the time the soldier's arms were weary, the antidote had strengthened the prisoner enough that he could walk beside him, one armored hand holding his arm possessively.

 **: : :**

Bruce tested the locks of his cell carefully.  It was closer to a cage than a cell, really.  In the cell next to him, Hal Jordan was raving about vampiric yellow elephants.  Apparently he'd also been exposed to the Red Mist--possibly deliberately, to interfere with his willpower.  His ring was nowhere to be seen.  Bruce sat down, leaning against a wall, and waited, as there was little else to do.  He continued to analyze the security level of the compound and the ability levels of the guards, but all that was close to automatic behavior for him.  That meant there was little left to distract him from his own private thoughts.

Unfortunately.

Bruce winced as Jordan's bloodsucking elephants apparently began to sing "It's a Small World After All."  He wondered if he'd sounded as nonsensical in his own delirium. 

  
He remembered enough of it to know he _wished_ he had been that nonsensical.  He could only hope that what had made transcendent, shattering sense to him had sounded meaningless to Clark.

He was musing absently on the properties of chalcedony-- _a translucent cryptocrystalline form of silica with a waxy lustre, notable for its extreme fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite.  Differs from quartz in having a monoclinic structure rather than trigonal.  The name is derived from the ancient Greek town of Chalkedon, which is today part of the Kadikoy district of Istanbul_ \--when another guard in vicious black armor approached the cell.  "I'm here for my shift," the new guard said gruffly, although not gruffly enough to disguise the sweet familiarity of his voice to Bruce.

"Eh?  I thought I was on for another hour," said their current guard.

The new guard shrugged.  "Change of plans.  You know how they are.  You're to start your break early."

The former guard didn't seem to be anxious to challenge this chance at a break and made himself scarce.  The new guard took up a position in front of Bruce's cell.

"These full helmets are extremely handy, you know,"  Clark said conversationally, not moving his head.  "Did you ever see that Evil Overlord's List?  The one where he swears to always make his guards wear clear plexiglass helmets?  Good thing they didn't get that."

"Yes, I saw it.  You forwarded it to everyone on the JLA.  Twice."  


"Ah, so I did.  Fortunately for us, they didn't get the memo about how shooting is _not_ too good for one's enemies, or about not imprisoning members of the same party in the same cell block."

Clark seemed disgustingly cheerful for a depowered alien whose comrades were currently caged.  The man always had a touching faith that the two of them could get out of anything, no matter what the circumstances.  Bruce had no such faith.

Faith was a religious concept for an unfounded belief in something you had no _proof_ of, after all.  


With Clark, Bruce had no need of faith.  


"You've located the ring?"

"Of course.  And this will be helpful."  He palmed a little green vial over to Bruce.  "Antidote for G.L., if you can get him to take it.  Once he's lucid again, he should be able to summon his ring.  It doesn't seem to be under a force field."

"This part could be tough.  Be ready to create a distraction if anyone notices me talking with him."

Clark nodded as Bruce set to work trying to convince Jordan to drink the antidote.  Luckily the vial was green, for he eventually managed to persuade the delirious man that the power to defeat the yellow vampiric pachyderms was in that potion.  Hal drank it and slumped back to the ground, still raving.  Slowly, however, his voice became less fragmented and his eyes less glazed.  


A patrol leader came around.  "Is the Lantern still out of it?"

"Seems it," said Clark shortly.  "Might die, I suppose."  Hal had the good sense to launch into a fresh bout of nonsense at that point, and the leader grunted.  


"Better a dead Lantern than a lucid one.  Those bastards're dangerous."  He wandered off again.

Bruce heard Clark's dry chuckle.  "Dangerous bastards.  I'm surrounded by dangerous bastards."

"Don't...insult my...mother."  Hal's voice was weak but composed.

Bruce gripped the bars between them.  "Can you call your ring, Lantern?"

Jordan winced and closed his eyes.  "Let me focus."  He held his hand out in front of him, his lips moving slightly.  Within moments, the ring zipped through the air to nestle on Jordan's hand.  He clenched his fist and smiled grimly.  "Let's show them what dangerous bastards can do," he said.

After wrenching their cells apart, Green Lantern's constructs ripped through the pirate stronghold with brutal efficiency.  In the chaos, Batman got separated from Superman.  Leveling a foe, he stared around him--without powers, Clark was vulnerable.  Bruce had to find him and make sure he was okay.  Fever dreams threatened to rise up and drown him again--locusts whirring, rains of blood, chalcedony immaculate and shining--but he pushed them and his growing panic aside and waded through the melee in search of his teammate.

As it turned out, Clark found him.  There was a yelp of alarm and a thud at his back;  he pivoted to find Clark up against him, the knife he had deflected from Bruce sticking through his forearm, blood trickling down already.  


"Ow," said Clark stupidly as Bruce took out the stealthy fighter.  


Green Lantern sailed overhead.  "The cavalry's on their way!"

"Kal's hurt!  Give us some shielding!" Bruce yelled, and a green-tinted bubble descended over them, cutting out the noise of the battle almost entirely just as a few more Green Lanterns appeared to complete the work of dismantling the camp.

"Damn it, Clark," hissed Bruce as he helped the other man to the ground and quickly removed the knife as Clark winced, "When will you learn to lay low when you have no powers?"  He cut a piece of his cape off and began to bandage Clark's arm with it.

Clark snarled at him.  "I'll learn it the same time _you_ learn I can't stand to see you hurt!"  He caught his breath and went on. "I just had to spend a whole night watching you suffer, _making_ you suffer, so forgive me if I just can't stand it anymore!"

"You didn't make me suffer."  Bruce focused on the black cloth on Clark's arm so he didn't have to look at Clark's eyes.

"Didn't make--Bruce, you kept saying...saying I burned you, saying I hurt you, and you--" Clark's voice broke, "--You cried out when I touched you, and tried to get away, and I couldn't let you, I couldn't, I'm sorry..."  He swallowed;  Bruce could see the movement of his throat.  "I just...don't want to hurt you."  His voice was a whisper, barely audible over the sound of battle outside their bubble.  "Please don't let me hurt you."

Bruce met his eyes then, bright with anguish.  "You never could, Clark," he said.  "It's not...that kind of burning."

The pain in Clark's eyes was shifting to confusion as the bubble dissipated from around them and Jordan and Kilowog flew down.  "I'll explain it later, Clark," Bruce said hastily, still meeting Clark's gaze.

The confusion might have been moving toward hope.  "Promise?"

"Promise."  Bruce turned to the Lanterns and away from the smile on Clark's face.  Chalcedony and flame, light that illuminated but never burned.

Promise.


End file.
